


The Age of Dave Strider

by AlFallsDown



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/M, M/M, more tags to come as i write, the alphadave/alpharose is bg dont worry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-22 22:23:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15592059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlFallsDown/pseuds/AlFallsDown
Summary: Austin, Texas is crowded on the very best of days, but on the thirty-first of December, 2014, a lone taxi cab is able to beat the traffic in time to deliver its one inhabitant to their destination. When the door opens, a man steps out. His birth name is Dave Strider. His current alias: Richard Newport. Soon, however, he will be Claus Finn. It so happens to be an overcast day, the third Thursday of the month, and the first and last chapters of his story all at once.This is an au inspired by the movie Age of Adaline in 2015 bc im trash and I love these cheesy romance things





	The Age of Dave Strider

  Austin, Texas is crowded on the very best of days, but on the thirty-first of December, 2014, a lone taxi cab is able to beat the traffic in time to deliver its one inhabitant to their destination. When the door opens, a man steps out. His birth name is Dave Strider. His current alias: Richard Newport. Soon, however, he will be Claus Finn. It so happens to be an overcast day, the third Thursday of the month, and the first and last chapters of his story all at once.

  The strings of his pullover swing wildly as he waves in thanks to the taxi driver, then turns to make his way up the stoop to the apartment he had been dropped of in front of. A stray gust of wind disrupts the neat set of his hair, and he frowns only slightly as he runs a weary hand through it. Perhaps he needs that haircut after all.

  Dave decides to knock instead of chance the doorbell, and the knob is turning before he can even rap his knuckles more than twice against the wood. A younger boy stares warily up at him.  
"You've gotta be quiet, okay? My dad workth nighths and he'th tryna thleep tho we can't wake him up, got it? It'th on your asth if he hearth uth."  
Dave nods, unable to keep the demure smile at his expense flit across his features. This kid can't be more than seventeen years old by the looks of him. Hopefully he knows what he's doing.

  They move through a hallway crowded with books and old skateboard paraphernalia before the boy leads Dave into his room. This part of the house seems even more crowded, though this time with stacks of junked together computer monitors and wires. Dave barely has time to marvel at his old autographed band CD's before a stack of papers is pushed into his hands.

  
"I finithed the coloring for you latht night, and added a few thingth thith morning to throw anybody off a thent trail. It'th a trademark thecret, yknow, I put little thtains and fingerprint thmudgeth tho it lookth like extended uthe. Any dimwit worth hith two chinth wouldn't look twice at any of it, that'th my guarantee."

  Dave looks over the passport books and ID, nodding when he figures everything is in order and handing the wad of bills to his teenaged business partner.

"Thanks, that should do the trick. Keep the change by the way, I hate carrying around big bills. Burns a hole in my pocket, yknow?" he says, stuffing the documents into a bag slung against his hip. The poor kid looks like he doesn't know what to do with such a sum of money, stammering out a thanks as he trails after him.

"Uh, yeah well, if you have any friendth who might need-"

"Why exactly are you doing this?" Dave interrupts, though his journey back to the front door never slows.

"I. What?"

"You've got a whole life ahead of you, kid. Forgery gets you about $300,000 in fines and up to six years in the slammer. Why risk it?"

  The boy stops in his tracks, shoulders slumping a little as his expression turned into one of sour distaste.

"Fuck. You're a cop, aren't you?" Dave just laughs, tugging his shoes back on over his feet with a shake of his head.

"Nah. I'm just about the furthest you can get from any of that shit. I'm just saying. You should really be careful about this kind of stuff, eh Sollux?"

  The look on the kid's face can only be described as shocked disbelief.

"Tony. It'th--It'th Tony."

"Autographs on your bookshelf made out to Sollux. Careful 'bout the little details, thats what slips you up the worst in the end. Good luck, kiddo."

  Dave slips out the door into the muggy afternoon once more, and Sollux never hears from him, at least under his forged name, again.

  The subway is never the most wonderful mode of transportation, but Dave braves it in lieu of paying for another cab ride to his apartment. There are no less than seven locks on his door, and it takes longer than he would like to spend standing there to get them all open, but every second is worth it the moment he hears a pitiful meow thrown his way from somewhere inside. All he has to do is crouch to the floor and wait open-armed so a small flash of grey and white fur can crash into his chest, purring the once she gets to reunite with her owner.

"Aw, hey baby. You miss me? Bet you're just all fired up cause you didn't get a twelve o ' clock snack, huh?"

  Critter doesn't answer by way of any particular word, but a rumbly purr communicates more than she'd ever need to. Dark curtains cover every window in the apartment, so once Dave opens a few to face the dying light of the day it seems like new life is breathed into each room. He sits cross-legged in front of a few aging trunks, loading knick knacks and camera equipment into their allotted spots.

"You're gonna love this new spot, Crit, I bet it. You'll get to go outside more, there's a million different kinda birds to chase, and check this out: it's the same place your great-great grandpa grew up how whack is that?"

  The kitten sniffs among a few yellowed photographs, each depicting some very similar-looking grey and white felines.

  
"Roxy used to say you could hear ghosts in the barn but I bet she was just tryna scare us into leaving her favorite reading spot alone. We can go visit where she used to live, too, think that'd be fun? Just you and me on the trail whaddya think?" he asks her, his fingers winding lazily around her tail as his free hand flips through a stack of old photos. He only appears in a few of them, but it's obvious the younger boy in the black-and-white pictures is him.

  He looks down at his watch, cursing quietly and setting the photo album back in its place. Critter peers up at him almost inquisitively as he stands, shrugging his jacket back on.

"Sorry sweetheart, gotta get to work. Hold down the fort, yeah?"

  The kitten is given one more kiss to the head before the streets hold one more passenger, this time on their way to the Austin Public Archives Building on 18th street.

  Dave's desk is void of anything that wasn't work related, and that's just the way he likes it. One never knows when they might need to pick up and run, and leaving personal items spread out in more than one place is just asking to be found out. He barely sets his bag down and picks up a pen before he's interrupted again.

"Hey, Rich." Dave gives Steven a nod in greeting, draping his jacket over the back of his chair. Kelly pops her head over the divide between their work stations, almost dislodging her glasses from the bridge of her nose in the process.

"Ricky!" Dave frowns, though they both know he doesn't mean it.

"Don't call me that."

"We thought you weren't coming in today, since its New Years Eve and all." Her cardigan is a nice maroon today, Dave notices. She must be trying to impress someone if she's pulling out the warm colors.

"New Years Eve or not, its still a Wednesday. 'Sides, the fun doesn't start until tonight anyways." he tells her, scratching his pen against a discarded piece of paper to make sure it still had some ink left in it. Kelly shrugs, turning back to her work.

"Yeah, well. We've got your favorite for you, by the way. Just came in from New York, thought you'd wanna do the honors of getting it cataloged."

  
  Dave raises an eyebrow at her proposition, but they all know he would never refuse a chance to get his hand on old microfiche newsreels. Steve plunks a box onto his desk, and he wastes no time hefting it into the side room so he can look through them all. One in particular catches his eye. The label reads 1906 News by Year Austin Texas. A startled sort of sigh escapes his lips, and the minute hand on the wall clock doesn't have a chance to tick twice before he's closing the curtains and feeding the reel into the old machine. His fingers find each switch and latch with deft practice, and soon enough the picture blooms onto the wall, and his mind wanders to a more simple time.

\----

  David Michael Strider was born at 12:00 a.m., January 1st, 1908 at Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas. Twenty years later as he took a stroll along a busy street with his mother, a young blossoming author and schoolteacher dropped her umbrella, and he retrieved it out of a fountain for her. Their eyes met slowly, and it took them even longer to look away from one another. Ninety-six days after they met, Dave was married to Rose Marie Lalonde in a small Baptist church along the waterfront in New London, Texas. After three happy years, Rose gave birth a baby boy. They named him Dirk, after Dave's then-deceased brother.

  In March of 1937, a gas explosion at the London School of New London killed over 295 students and teachers. One of the souls lost was Rose. Ten months after his wife's death, Dave was driving north to his sister-in-law's summer cottage, where a young Dirk waited up for him with his Aunt. As he rode along, something highly unusual occurred; something almost downright magical.

Snow started to fall in this part of Texas.

  The ice on the road made driving straight a difficult task, and by the time the wipers cleared the white from his windshield, Dave saw the ravine just seconds too late. He slid through a fence and tipped sideways down the steep hill. His car rolled once, twice, three times down into a frigid river below, and he was plunged into the depths.

  The instant submersion into the freezing water caused his body to default into a anoxic reflex, pausing any breathing and slowing his heartbeat. After a few minutes, his body temperature was lower than 87 degrees Fahrenheit. At that point, his heart stopped beating entirely, and at 9:26 p.m., Dave Strider was by any means dead.

  At 9:29, however, the icy storm produced a single lightning strike, and a bolt carrying about half a billion volts of electricity struck the roof of the sinking car. The charge defibrillated Dave's heart and thrust him out of his anoxic state, and he took his first breath in four minutes. He pulled himself from the wreckage and collapsed beside the road, where a passing car happened to stop and see if he was alright. From this point, defying half a dozen laws of nature, Dave Strider will never age forward a single day.

**Author's Note:**

> this is the first thing I've written in almost a year how sad is that  
> Just something I copypasted from working on in the strilondes discord server, let's just hope i dont run out of inspiration any time soon because this movie is a masterpiece and I'd really like to actually finish a project for once


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